Award-winning
Certified Naturally Grown
Honey
Our bees visit a variety of wildflowers native to the lower Connecticut River Valley such as dandelion, purple loosestrife, asters, clover, and goldenrod, along with flowering trees including maples, willows, sumac, and locust, to create a wonderfully unique, light honey with an exquisite taste.
And best of all, our honey is made using organic methods. That means we use no chemical pesticides to treat our hives, and our apiaries are located away from commercial farms and industrial sites. It takes more work to keep our hives healthy, but we believe it's better for our bees, environment--and you! Why's our honey SO GOOD? It's the combination of our area's floral sources AND, unlike many beekeepers, our honey is 100% LOCAL--we never blend with bulk honey from somewhere else. Somehow, that doesn't seem honest to us... While we have no control over where our bees forage we can say that here in southeastern Connecticut there are no large-scale agricultural or industrial sites that could contaminate nectar and pollen collection. We are members of Connecticut Northeast Organic Farmers Association (CT-NOFA) and have signed the FARMERS PLEDGE to follow organic principles. And now we're CERTIFIED NATURALLY GROWN. This program "maintains a more strict adherence to the original ideals and principles of organic agriculture even as USDA Organic comes uner constaint pressure to water down standards to accomodate large agribusiness corporations." To learn more about our organic methods click here.
Sometimes referred to as the Bordeau of Honeys, Three Sisters Farms honey is excellent drizzled on warm buttered toast or, better yet, eaten alone by the teaspoonful!
If you've tried our honey you know it's delicious. Our production is up but will still not meet expected demand. We try and reserve stocks for our best customers--will you be one, too?
Three Sisters Farms local honey production
8 oz. jar -- $6.75
12 oz. -- $8.50
1 lb. jar -- $12.50
2008 Crop VERY LIMITED-- Slight price increase but oohhh, so good!
Fresh organic honey ready to be capped and labeled. 1st Place -- Chester Fair!
Recipes
The hive is also reconfigured to enhance the powdered sugar method (also known as the "DOWDA Method", after the Florida Apiary inspector who initially devised the idea). The traditional wood bottom board of the hive is replaced with a screened bottom board. The construction mesh screen allows the mites to fall through and away from the bees, making it much harder for the mites to return to their hosts. These boards cost about twice as much as a traditional bottom board but should prove their value over time in reducing the mite pressure on the bees. Removal and freezing of drone brood is another method that successfully reduces the level of varroa, as the mites prefer to lay eggs in drone comb.
We have nearly completed conversion of all our honeycomb and foundation to natural beeswax in order to meet National Organic Standards that are currently under development. "Foundation" is the base upon which bees build up or "draw out" honeycomb. Bees build honeycomb using wax they produce from glands behind their wings. It takes about seventeen times as much honey to build the honeycomb as it does to fill, so you can see that honeycomb is quite valuable to the bee and the beekeeper. As a result, we do not produce 'comb honey' for sale. We've now have replaced 95% of our foundations with natural beeswax. To assist the bees, the beekeeper can feed the bees sugar syrup which is consumed by the bees like nectar, their traditional carbohydrate source.
Feeding organically requires the beekeeper to use ORGANIC SUGAR as the source for making the syrup. Our organic sugar is produced in Paraguay, although we occasionally obtain some from a Florida producer. The evaporated cane sugar we use is brown like the "raw sugar" you sometimes see in restaurants or health food stores. Interestingly, it dissolves much more readily than refined sugar and the resulting syrup looks Coca Cola brown! The cost of organic sugar is more than twice that of non-organic refined sugar--we'd love to see the cost come down but that is unlikely to occur in the near term.
We infrequently use a miticide that meets Organic Standards known as "ApiGuard". This product has been used effectively in Europe with great success for the past 15 years and is now EPA-approved for use by beekeepers in the United States. ApiGuard consists of a gel made with thymol. The great thing about this product is that it can be applied during the honey producing season with no harm to the bees or contamination the honey. It received approval in 2006 for use in Connecticut.